Failures resulted in 87 women being notified incorrectly that they were no longer part of the cervical screening programme and may have compromised patient safety, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

A report released on Thursday said patients may also have been harmed because of a failure to update the official list of 37,000 qualified GPs, dentists and opticians.

Capita’s performance and NHS England’s decision to outsource administration services have resulted in continuing problems for primary care practitioners, said the NAO.

It follows last month’s announcement that the debt-laden firm has been forced into a £701m cash call following concerns over its finances.

Fears over the outsourcing sector have intensified after a report by MPs on Wednesday accused Carillion’s directors of putting their financial rewards ahead of all other concerns.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the public accounts committee, said Thursday’s report showed that parliament is right to be concerned over the health of the sector.

“Trying to slash costs by more than a third at the same time as implementing a raft of modernisation measures was over-ambitious, disruptive for thousands of doctors, dentists, opticians and pharmacists and potentially put patients at risk of serious harm,” she said.

In August 2015, NHS England entered into a seven-year, £330m contract with Capita to deliver primary care support services covering payments to GP practices, opticians and pharmacies, staff pensions and changes to the lists of qualified practitioners.

NHS England spent £90m on these services in 2015 and aimed to reduce its costs by 35% from the first year of the contract.

Capita proposed an overall reduction in staff numbers and expected to make a loss of £64m in the first two years of the contract, which it planned to recoup in later years.

Within months, poorly implemented changes in a new courier and labelling arrangement meant that providers struggled with the new systems. Capita could not cope with the resulting “significant increase” in complaints, the report said.

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Auditors said Capita closed 35 out of 38 support offices across the country, cutting staff from 1,300 to 650, but this meant that there was a loss in local knowledge.

NHS England was forced to intervene in September 2016, serving default notices on Capita and increasing the numbers of staff, the report said.

The report said that patients could potentially have been put at risk due to problems with the “performers list” of GPs, dentists and opticians practising in the NHS, including whether they are suitably qualified and have passed other relevant checks.

Problems with the list also led to around 1,000 GPs, dentists and opticians being unable to work, 200 of whom have sought money for lost earnings, the report said.

Other service failures included a backlog of 500,000 patient registration letters, medical supplies not being delivered, and delays or loss of patients’ medical records.

The report follows a series of outsourcing blunders involving Capita, which employs 70,000 people worldwide. In 2014, Capita racked up a backlog of assessments for personal independence payments, prompting the government to bring in civil servants.

Earlier this month, staff from Tascor, which is part of the outsourcing giant, were criticised for using excessive restraint on low-risk asylum seekers on a removal flight.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said that both NHS England and Capita misjudged the scale and nature of the risk in outsourcing services.

“While NHS England has achieved financial savings and some services have now improved, value for money is about more than just cost reduction,” he said.

Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA’s GP committee, said his members have called for elements of this service to be taken back in-house, and this report is now recommending the same. “With this as an option, we are now asking NHS England how it plans to resolve the shambles that is Capita’s running of Primary Care Support England,” he said.

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An NHS England spokesman said: “While not without its difficulties, by making this change over the past two years the NHS has successfully saved taxpayers £60m, as the NAO themselves confirm.”

A Capita spokesperson said the complexity of the support services being let by NHS England was not fully understood when the contract was signed.

“It has been acknowledged that performance has improved and Capita will continue to work with all parties to address the remaining service issues,” they said. “We have accepted accountability for not meeting our high standards of service previously.”